ATLANTA – Memo to the Mets and Braves: There never has been a ballgame in the history of baseball that was decided in the clubhouse. Or the interview room. Or in the newspapers

Same goes for football games, basketball games, hockey games, boxing matches and, believe it or not, horse races. The scoreboard keeps track of runs, not snaps.

The games are usually won by the better team, the fights by the better fighter, the races by the fastest horse.

Nowhere do they give points for clever repartee or particularly cutting insults. Ballplayers are decidedly bush-league when it comes down to a war of words.

First, they insult the other guy. Then they see what they said in print. Or hear it over the air. Or learn that it’s been posted on the other team’s bulletin board.

And they get scared. They back off from their words. They insist they were misquoted. Then, someone produces a tape recorder and – and this is my favorite – they claim what they said “was taken out of context.”

Boomer Wells was a master of this. The self-proclaimed iconoclast who liked hogs, heifers and street fights let himself go last year and “guaranteed” his Yankees would beat the Braves in the World Series.

Then, when his words got some play – for some reason, sports writers and broadcasters still get all giddy when a player has the temerity to assert he thinks his team will win – Hells Angels Wells reacted the same way a Greg Maddux would. He denied. He obfuscated. He blamed the messengers.

Wells, like the rest of them, should stick to the game he knows.

None of them could hold a candle to Mike Tyson, for instance, who once told Razor Ruddock, “I can’t wait to kiss you on those big fat lips,” before a fight.

But even Tyson took it back after the expected outcry. “I’m sorry, Wazor, that I called you bad names,” whimpered the Baddest Man on the Planet.

That is why all this verbal silliness between the two teams left in the argument of who is best in the NL is just that. Silliness. The Braves think the Mets talk too much. Especially one Met, the one with the number 2 on his back.

The Mets think the Braves don’t give them enough respect. Especially the two who made their lives a living hell over a 10-day period in September, when making the playoffs seemed as likely as Rickey Henderson winning a hustle contest.

And you know what? They’re both right. Who cares?

The Mets, and, in particular, Mr. Met himself, Bobby Valentine, should learn to shut their mouths on a variety of subjects. Especially the Braves.

Not, mind you, because they might anger their adversaries, but because based on what they’ve accomplished so far, the Mets really have no right to.

And the Braves, namely Chipper Jones and John Rocker, don’t seem to take the Mets very seriously. But the truth is, why should they?

Through their tumultuous fall and rise again over the last three weeks, all the Mets have proven is what everyone already knew. That by the numbers, they are still no better than the second-best team in the National League, and more important, no better than second-best in the NL East.

They have a chance, beginning with last night’s Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, to reverse positions with their tormentors. All it will take is four wins out of the next seven games.

But they are not going to do it with talk, or insults, or snits over perceived disrespects from the best team in the league, until proven otherwise.

Same for the Braves, who would not seem to need such foolishness, having won 9 of the 12 regular-season games between the teams, including 5 of 6 when the Mets desperately could not afford to lose.

Still, Jones and Rocker couldn’t resist verbally kicking their foils when they were down. Jones, showing remarkable understanding of sports fans everywhere, observed that “now Mets fans can go and put on their Yankee hats.”

But like the rest of them, he soon weaseled. “You always say things in the heat of battle that maybe you don’t mean at the time,” he said. “I have the utmost respect for their ballclub the last thing I want is to get into a newspaper war with Bobby Valentine.”

Typical ballplayer.

Rocker, however, showed real potential as a trash talker when he explained his on-mound intensity in the first game of their September series in Atlanta by declaring, “I [bleeping] hate the Mets.”

Alas, he too, backed off. Now Rocker says he doesn’t hate the players, merely the fans.

Of course, he should hate neither. The nature of today’s game is that this year’s enemies are tomorrow’s teammates.

And all fans, no matter how foolishly vehement, are the reason Rocker and his buddies can cash their obscenely inflated paychecks. But the biggest reason why baseball players should throw out the trash is because due to the nature of the game, it’s not supposed to work.

Baseball is the only sport in which we are repeatedly told that hitters fail when they “try too hard” and pitchers get lit up when they are “too strong.” There is no greater knock on a baseball player than saying he has a “football mentality,” which means he isn’t laid-back enough to play this most leisurely of games.

Last night, both teams seemed to have remembered that baseball truism.

Braves manager Bobby Cox decided the Mets were “a real class ballclub.” He even went so far as to say that while “There are a few players around the league you wouldn’t want to have on your team,” he couldn’t think of any in a Mets uniform, greatly increasing Bobby Bonilla’s chances of employment next season.

He also downplayed the Braves regular-season dominance. “A lot of those games have been tight,” he said. “If we catch a break here or there, maybe we’ll have some success.”

Even Valentine skirted the issue of bad blood between the two teams.

“I believe it’s going to be a very competitive series,” he said. “Two talented teams leaving it all out on the field.”

Lah-di-dah.

Just once, I’d like to hear a baseball player tell the unvarnished truth: That the other team stinks, that its starting pitcher is a gutless dog, its manager is a moron and its supposed stud hitter really sings show tunes in the shower.

It may not make a bit of difference in the games, but oh, what press conferences!